Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank died of typhus in a Nazi concentration camp a month earlier than thought, a new study has claimed.
Anne died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany at the age of 15.
The exact date of her death is unknown. However, the Red Cross at the time officially concluded that she died some time between March 1 and March 31, 1945.
The Dutch authorities later set the official date of death at March 31 for both Anne and her sister Margot, just two weeks before allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camp on April 15, 1945.
Now new research by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has shed fresh light on the last months of Anne and Margot.
According to the research, it is unlikely that they were still alive in March; their deaths must have occurred in February 1945.
Researchers studied the archives of the Red Cross, the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, together with as many eyewitness testimonies of survivors as possible.
Research was also carried out into the existing literature.
Four survivors reported that Anne and Margot showed symptoms of typhus by late January 1945.
According to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, most deaths caused by typhus occur around twelve days after the first symptoms appear.
The researchers thus concluded that it is unlikely that they survived until the end of March.
"In view of this, the date of their death is more likely to be some time in February," the researchers said.
Anne Frank's diary 'The Diary of a Young Girl' details her hiding with her family and other Jews in secret rooms behind a bookcase in the building where her father worked that is now her museum.
After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne and Margot Frank were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
